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After being forced into prostitution, robbed of their earnings and stripped of their identification documents, two young Ontario women who are among Canada’s estimated 1,500 annual human trafficking victims were handed justice in an inaugural ruling this week.

Tyrone Burton, 30, became the first person convicted of human trafficking in the city of Toronto on Monday, found guilty of a slew of prostitution charges of the kind one detective says are “very” difficult to prove in court.

“We’re out there trying to protect these girls, but it’s a struggle. So this was a good day for us,” said Det. Const. Peter Brady, a member of the Toronto police Human Trafficking Enforcement Team and one of the detectives on the case.

Burton was arrested in December 2012, with police alleging he had controlled the movements of two women, aged 19 and 21, forced them to prostitute themselves and kept all their earnings for several weeks before the women escaped and went to police.

The conviction, handed down by Ontario Court Justice Bruno Cavion, is only the latest on Burton’s long rap sheet. In 2007, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison after molesting a babysitter while the three young children she was watching were left unattended in another room. Before that, he was convicted of assault, counterfeiting money, and drugs and firearms possession.

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Brady says human trafficking offences are extremely difficult to prove, in large part because of the “bizarre dynamic” that abusers skillfully develop with their victims.

“These accused are really good at what they do. They prey on vulnerable girls, girls that come from bad backgrounds, low self-esteem, and then they befriend them, promise them condos, money, clothes, they promise them protection,” he said.

The traffickers use threats and coercion to stop their victims from going to police, and the ones that do remain extremely hesitant to tell the whole truth. In some cases, they play down what happened to them in court, Brady said.

“The girls are terrified of their abuser, yet they still feel protective,” he said, adding that it’s a similar phenomenon to Stockholm syndrome, when hostages feel sympathy toward captors to the point of defending them.

Toronto City Hall’s executive committee approved spending $850,000 on the pilot project at a meeting Tuesday, money that would be used to renovate a multi-unit Toronto Community Housing building that would house five to six women.

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